


anatomy of a second language

by searching4neverland



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, innocent moment, show!canon universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-07 12:56:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11059443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/searching4neverland/pseuds/searching4neverland
Summary: It feels good to have an understanding of this kind with Sansa. Little secret ways of speaking to one another with a look, or a tilt of the head. They build these bridges to and from one another, ever so tentative, as if they are learning a second language.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> when i saw the trailer, and saw that shot of Littlefinger lurking in the dark, illuminated by this sliver of light, *this* came to mind, as a 'what he might be looking at' moment. But also not because i dont want him anywhere near this moment, it shouldn't belong to him. So it's up to you how you imagine it.  
> Enjoy. 
> 
> (unbetaed, so my apologies for that)

_1._

> _When a sadness chews at the bottom of your heart, it’s as though you walk all day with your dress on backwards, the buttons facing the forest, the collarf acing the village._
> 
> _\- Deathless, Catherynne M Valente_

 

Jon moves through the hall silently, hardly disturbing even the shadows. Night fell hours ago – the days grow shorter – and the quiet inside the halls is deep. During the day, Winterfell hums with the shared breaths and labors of near a thousand men and women dedicated to restoring it, preparing for winter, preparing for war. But in the night it’s so quiet and still, he thinks sometimes he can  hear his own heartbeat.

Too quiet, in truth.

There are ghosts in Winterfell, and in the night, Jon can hear them whispering.

It’s what’s got him out of his rooms and stalking the hallways as all the rest of the household except for the guards in the watchtowers lays sleeping. He walks and tries to match his the fast mire of his thoughts to the more contained pace of his feet, at least for a while. Just enough to quiet the noise inside his skull to a dull roar, so that he may rest a bit before the next day.

It’s another hour before his feet start aching, his body sore with the need to rest. His mind is not less loud, but he is just tired enough that if he lays down, he might sleep regardless of how much he can’t stop thinking.

As he turns the corner that will take him to his rooms however, he notices the flickering light at the end of the corridor, just a few feet further than the door he is headed for. It comes from the fire within, he knows. Some candles too, if she is reading. It’s what she does before she goes to bed, almost every night, like a ritual. She reads missives, or goes over all their provisions and the notes that lord Manderly must have left on the books. And upon knowing that he sleeps as much as she does, if not less, she started leaving the door of her room just a click open. And invitation that she had to verbalize the first five times, before she didn't need to any longer. Sometimes she wishes to speak to him of something non-urgent that has happened during the day, something she'd rather have him consider in private.

Most times, she just wants the company and though she's not as she was in the beginning, Jon knows his is the company she can most easily abide by.

He smiles as he walks towards her door.

It feels good to have an understanding of this kind with Sansa; little secret ways of speaking to one another with a look, or a tilt of the head. They build these bridges to and from one another ever so tentatively, as if they are learning a second language. And they are. He'd seen her face and thought 'family' from the first moment he laid eyes on her, and he knows she felt the same. But beyond that leap of faith, that immediate trust and love and longing for home they shared that felt so natural and good between them - they had been strangers, and it had been difficult to talk at first. He hadn't known how.  Learning these new ways of caring for one another, when they thought they were alone in the world for so long, has kindled a new affection for Sansa for that is there because she is _Sansa_ , beyond the love that he has for her as family.

And she couldn’t know how important it’s been for him, that she spoke to him with trust but always acknowledged silently that they still had to learn each other’s minds. That it did not frighten or discompose her as it might others, if there were moments when he didn’t have the first idea what she might say or do, because they had been so long apart that he could not have known… even if he had not died and come back. Nobody knows about that though. How sometimes he wakes up and feels like the ghost of someone whose name was once Jon Snow. That the wounds on his body never closed, that the skin beneath them just started healing but still it looked like an open wound, just not a wet one anymore. They look as unnatural as he feels sometimes. That for all that he would die for her and kill for her, for all that he did both, sometimes there are moments, when he looks at Sansa by the firelight after long stretches of silence, and he forgets who she is.

But that’s also a kind of lie.

He never forgets. Could never. But sometimes sorting through the fine details of himself feels it’s like trying to read a page from a book while standing too far away.

And Sansa… Sansa is easier than most to talk to, because there is so little of her in his memories from before that he feels she wouldn't know the difference anyway. Between who he was when he died and what came back. He hasn't lost her. He's just now finding her.

Same as he found her that morning at Castle Black, pale with exhaustion, blue-lipped form the cold and still shivering. Seeing her face had felt like the first good thing to happen to him in... longer than he could remember. Something so sweet it had felt misplaced in his life, like a dream. Something that could not be real. A gift, after having to stare nothingness in the face and come back from it cold, feeling more dead than alive. Melisandre said he’d come back to deliver the world from darkness, but that feels like such a lie, he has never taken it seriously. Not when all he wanted to do was run away. Not when, after the battle first started the rage had taken him so far that he had barely recognized himself for days and days.

Sansa’s exhausted face however is realer. Her scars, her anger, her hand in his. Avenging their family, taking back their home, sitting with his sister by the fire. All those things are real and more often than not John wonders if he did not come back so that he could find Sansa and finally come home. Sometimes, when he manages to believe that, he almost feels like it might have been worth it.

When he is in front of her door, he raises his fist to knock, but then stops when he sees her.

Yes, this happens too: she waits but he walks Winterfell’s halls and battlements for too long and she eventually falls asleep, just like she has now. Just once, he found her sleeping on her desk, cheek pressed against her hand and fingers stained in dark ink, her quill an inch away from them. Most times though she moves the long upholstered recliner from the foot of her bed closer to the fire, and lays there. He's never seen her sleeping in her bed, and he knows there's a reason for that, aside from him having no business knowing where she sleeps. 

Only a mere three moons ago he would have never dreamed of walking in, but now he does. Sansa doesn’t stir, not even her breathing changes. That too is so very different from what might have happened before, when she slept so lightly that she would always wake if anyone so much as stepped into the same room with her. But Winterfell is home, and he’s done his level best to make it safe. They both have.

And it never hurt of course, that whenever he smells her fear, Ghost is ever ready to spill blood. When they had understood that, both Jon and Sansa had started sleeping that much easier.

He glances at his direwolf now, curled as he is the big beast, at the foot of her stool. Ghost flicks an ear and that is all the acknowledgment Jon gets.

The warmth of her room enveloping him like an embrace. He leaves his cloak over one of the chairs and walks past her, to the fire. Moves the logs around to encourage them to burn and stares at the flames, his mind half absent, still caught in all that he would have to do tomorrow. When his thoughts get too heavy, Jon turns to look at Sansa instead. Tomorrow is inevitable – staying up all night will not save him from it.

It is much better to think about how, when she sleeps, Sansa almost looks as young as perhaps three and ten. Her hair is unbound, a red spill down her back and around her head. It softens the sharp angles of her face considerably and so does the way her cheek is squished against the pillow and her hand, lips parted just a little. If he told her that she drools in her sleep, she would pinch him, probably. The thought almost makes him laugh.

He reaches over and with the tips of his fingers he tugs the hem of her skirt to cover her ankles, and her shawl over her shoulder, from where it had slipped off. He’s just about to leave her to this rare peaceful rest, when she takes a deep breath.

“Is it morning?” Her voice is rough and sleep soaked, her eyes still closed.

John smiles. “No. Sleep, Sansa.”

He strokes a hand down her arm and rises, but she reaches out and takes his hand in a strong grip before he can withdraw it.

“I dreamt about Arya and Bran.” She says slowly, eyes fixed on the hearth. “They were alone in the cold. I kept calling for them, but they couldn’t hear me.”

Jon stoops down next to her, covers her hand with his. She finally looks at him, the fire reflecting off the gathering tears in her eyes.

He can feel her hurt as if it were in his own chest, a second beating heart.

“I wanted to go to them, but I couldn’t move. I could just stand there, waiting.” A tear falls down her cheek, disappearing into her hair, the other sliding down her straight nose. “I keep telling myself that we could see them again but sometimes it feels like just one more lie I want to believe in.”

“The whole North is looking for them. If they are out there, we will find them.”

It’s what they tell each other these days, depending on which one of them is standing on the dangerous side of doubt.

“It’s been months and still no word…” And for the first time, she says it. They truth they’ve both known but never spoken, as if afraid of opening the door to something ill by giving their fear a voice. Even now, she only whispers it. “We don’t even know if they’re still alive.”

"No, we don't." Jon brushes away the tear from the top of her nose, her cheek. “What does your heart tell you?”

Sansa sighs and closes her eyes, leans her face against his palm as she clutches their joined hands closer. “My heart is silent, Jon.”

Her voice falls into a flatness he knows, eyes emptying of expression right before him. He doesn’t know what to say. Night has a way of changing so many thoughts; it’s the reason why he paces Winterfell instead of sleeping in his bed. So he just leans his forehead against her temple and takes a long breath.

Hope is a dreaded thing to have in a dark place. But they also have each other.

He leans back and sees her eyes are still closed, though she hasn’t let go of his hand nor John of hers.

“Everything sounds so much more frightening at night.” He says softly and kisses the top of her head. “The light of day might bring us different thoughts. Sleep.”

He stays with her, sitting by her side until her breaths even out and his own lids start to grow heavy.

Jon knows he could sleep there as he is, sitting down in front of her fire with her hand in his, but he makes himself get up regardless. Gently, he tugs his hand away from her grip. He takes one of the furs from Sansa’s bed and lightly lays it over her, taking care to cover her well. Thinks about smoothing away some hair that has fallen on her face, but doesn’t want to risk waking her, so he leaves, as silently as he came. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is apparently a thing. idk i just felt like writing something and this happened.  
> its supposed to be set about 5 to 6 years in the future, after the war for the dawn, in the perfect au of dreams where nobody dies (aka totally different world but lets ignore that).

2.

> _There comes a point when you just love someone. Not because they’re good, or bad, or anything really. You just love them. It doesn’t mean you’ll be together forever. It doesn’t mean you won’t hurt each other. It just means you love them. Sometimes in spite of who they are, and sometimes because of who they are. And you know that they love you, sometimes because of who you are, and sometimes in spite of it._
> 
> _—_
> 
> | 
> 
> _[Laurell K. Hamilton](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fthelovejournals.com%2Ftagged%2Flaurell-k.-hamilton&t=ODhjZWQwMWY1OTI1ZjQxMTJlNDgxMTg0OTUzYTUxODVkNzA4NWJhNyxLcjB0VndFSQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AeDooDCJGro1CnfO4hLNwaw&p=http%3A%2F%2Fyellowflicker09011996.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F159646877427%2Fthere-comes-a-point-when-you-just-love-someone&m=1), Incubus Dreams_  
>   
> ---|---  
  
 “I admit that even after we stood together at the brick of the world’s end, I _still_ don't understand you Starks.”

Jon turned his - lately much less present - frown to Tyrion and when his face gave him nothing, he looked to Danny for help, who was usually more straightforward - and had more of a taste for Tyrion’s riddles. this time however, she  just shrugged and took a sip of her wine.

“I’m sure i wouldn’t mind clearing it up for you, if I knew what the bloody hell you’re talking about.”

Tyrion just looked at him for a long moment and Jon looked back, calm and waiting, almost amused really as he watched the firelight wash the planes and grooves of his his friend’s face in light and shadow by turns.

“Why don't you tell her?”

“Tell what to whom? It’s too late in the night for me to guess your riddles, Lannister, speak plainly.”

“You always call me _Lannister_ when I’m annoying you.” Tyrion pointed out with a lopsided smile.

Jon rolled his eyes. “Aye, is that what we’re calling it?”

Danny chuckled and slouched a little on her seat, tilting her head and looking at them under eyelids that were getting heavier by the moment. She was tired, Jon knew. The feast tonight had been long and full of people who had wanted to be seen by the queen. Twice as many as usual, because Sansa had been there as well, and wherever she went half the realm’s lords and petitioners seemed to follow these days. All three of them should have retired when Sansa wisely had, but they always spent a few hours every evening or other together when Jon came to the capital.

They had never decided it out loud, Jon realized then. It just happened, as things sometimes happen after you have grown closer to some than you ever imagined you would be to another human being. After not seeing either of them for almost a year, Jon knew he’d missed them.

Sometimes when they sat like this through the night and spoke of their lives and filled the gaps since they had last seen each other, Jon remembered that they had once been enemies and strangers, and it all seemed like it belonged to another life.

“I was simply making an observation that nobody else dares make to you.”

“As is his way.” Danny added, and now Jon was convinced that they were both teasing about for something he couldn’t seem to grasp.

“You actually asked a question.” Jon pointed out.

“It was rhetorical. I’m sure i won’t understand even _if_ you explain it to me. Which I’m also sure you won’t be able to do.”

Jon huffed a laugh and leaned back against his chair. “You seem intent on breaking my balls tonight.”

Tyrion shrugged but his eyes were shining with silent amusement. “Passes the time. I meant tell Sansa Stark that you love her.”

Jon’s smile melted off his face and was replaced with confusion. “She already knows.”

“Does she?” Tyrion’s slow smile was too self satisfied for Jon’s liking.

Danny leaned forward, setting her glass on the table, eyes suddenly serious as she made a careful appraisal of his face. “Jon?”

There really was no point to denying it, or beating around the bush. They knew each other too well for lies to stand a living chance in their midst. Jon didn’t even want to look up from the ale in his cup, convinced that once they saw his eyes he would be more exposed than if he’d been sitting there bare as his nameday.

Curse Tyrion Lannister and his penchant for shit stirring.

Danny reached out and wrapped her hand around his, the skin of her palm coarse in places he was familiar with. he had the same callouses from holding on to reigns, to Viserion’s spiky bones.

“You never told me that.” she spoke softly, with gentleness she always saved for when she felt safest.

“There’s nothing to tell. She’s my sister.”

“Except she’s not.” Danny pointed out immediately.

“You’re no more her brother now than you were five years ago. And it’s been just as long since anyone has known you as Ned Stark’s bastard.” Tyrion added.

Jon glared up at him. “That’s not the comfort you mean it to be.”

Tyrion waved his hand as if to swat a fly. “It’s the truth; it’s not meant to be comforting.”

Jon set his glass on the table and stood. “That’s not how Sansa thinks of it. Or me.”

He meant it to sound final. Close the topic that was making him so uncomfortable he could not sit still, not even here. He should have known better. It wasn’t in Tyrion’s nature to accept things as they were.. anymore than it was in his.

Jon tended to like that quality in his friend much better however, when it wasn't turned towards grilling him.

“And have you asked?”

Jon scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Oh, I couldn’t. You’ve left no room.”

“I’m retiring. Goodnight.”

He heard her steps coming after him. he shortened his own so she might reach him faster.

“Walking me to my rooms, your Grace?”

She took his arm with a sigh. “Well, you are my guest, after all.”

They walked in silence for a long stretch, the summer breeze dancing through the the high windows along with the moonlight, bringing in all the scents of the gardens below. Sansa had told him that the city used to stink so badly you could smell it five miles away, but Jon couldn’t detect any of that now. Nobody dared jape about it, but _she_ had, with a sweet smile and right to Tyrion’s face, when she asked him which was harder to do, flying beyond the Curtain of Light and having to find his way south again from further north than anyone living had ever been; or getting rid of the shit in King’s Landing.

Tyrion had laughed so long and loud that Danny had come from the other room asking if anyone had injured a bear.

“Don’t you think that after all we have all been through, we should try to take whatever happiness comes our way?”

He stopped in his steps and turned to her. The look on her face was patient and affectionate. She had taught herself patience carefully, like it was a  trade to hone, ever since they had first met. He was surprised to see her looking at him that way now, as if he was being difficult.

“I _am_ happy.”

“You’re content. That’s not being happy. Though I am a bit miffed i couldn't tell the difference half as well as i thought i could.”

“At least I’m not as transparent as Tyrion would make me.”

“My lord Hand makes most people transparent, you should not take it personally.”

Jon snorted.

“And I'm sure you could be happy, If you tried.”

Jon sighed. “Danny…”

They stopped in front of the doors of his rooms, and Danny didn’t even wait for him to open them, she just let herself in and closed the door behind him and then pinned him with a stubborn stare when she turned.

“Tyrion is right. As he often is.”

“Not about everything.” And not about this, Jon thought as he walked to the chairs set by the empty heath. He removed his jerkin and threw it over the back of the chair before sitting down.

“Certainly not, but he _is_ right about _this_ Jon.” She sat herself down on the chair next to him. “Why haven’t you ever mentioned any of this?”

He didn't have an answer for her. Not one he might have words for, anyway.

But then he remembered how Danny had been there, years ago, in one of the rare occasions Jon had lost his temper during council and Ghost had almost taken the fingers of a Lord or two because of their unwise decision to press harder than they should have on when it came to alliances through marries. How he’d been so gracious at first because he’d thought to explain that the only reason his kingship didn’t pass to Bran immediately upon his return to Winterfell was stability and the imminent war. That Winterfell itself and the North belonged to Bran and Sansa and Arya. That his brother was already as good as betrothed to Meera Reed so they needn't waste their breaths. That he would be king soon enough, since Jon’s own reign was going to be short lived. He had been so convinced in those days that he would die beyond the Wall.

He had understood a little too late what was meant.

That they didn’t think a crippled boy could father sons and sneered about it, that they saw his sisters as his to give away and that they thought they meant so little to him that he would; or that he was foolish enough to try.

How eager they had been, to impress upon him the suitability of their matches. In his anger there had been a little stunned corner of Jon’s mind that had wondered if any them making such propositions understood that they might probably be dead soon, and that none of their scheming mattered. If any who spoke of stronger ties had ever stood within five feet of either Sansa or Arya, if that even mattered. (he'd known it didn't). If they knew the former’s hatred could run as cold as her heart was kind, or whether they had never felt the latter’s biting steel.

How he had been so hardpressed to find polite ways to say no, until he couldn't anymore.

 _“I will_ not _sell my sisters.”_ he’d snapped, raising his voice.

_“Your cousins.”_

_“Same fucking difference.”_ Jon’s voice had been sounded almost as dangerous as Ghost's bared teeth and his silent snarl. To this day he remembered the heaviness of the silence in that hall then. And the gratefulness he had felt that both Arya and Sansa had not been there.

To his right, Davos had cleared his throat.

 _“My Lord.”_ He added then, between gritted teeth. But before any of them opened their mouths again, Jon spoke. _“I will hear no more of it. As you said, I am Sansa and Arya Stark’s cousin, therefore i have no authority to make matches for them. They are both Ladies of Winterfell and can answer you for themselves.”_

“When we took Winterfell from the Boltons… it was hard at first. I couldn’t sleep because… Well you know why. And Sansa…” Jon ran a hand down his face with a deep sigh. “We found each other in our solar more often than not. We’d sit on one of the wider stuffed chairs just like that one.”

And if there had been any rest to be had, it would be found there. They both had known there was little of it elsewhere.

Jon had never asked her and never would, but to this day he was convinced that Sansa had dreaded her bed for months and months, after. He used to find her sleeping on one of the chairs of on the furs close to the hearth… or with her head on a thin pillow he’d put on his lap. But that wasn’t his secret to tell, so Jon kept it. As he’d kept it for years, along with the rest of her secrets.  

Sometimes they spoke of their plans, their days, their family. Other times she’d tell him where she’d been, and Jon would tell her what he’d done. The day he told her he didn't remember some things was the most afraid he’d been since he woke up naked and cold on the hard table at Castle Black, alive when he knew he should be. He told her that sometimes at night when it was quiet and he could hear himself, he was convinced not all of him had come back, or maybe something else had come back with him. She’d taken his hand between both of hers and held it so tight he’d thought his bones might bend. Jon flexed his fingers where they were resting on the arms of the chair. He could feel her hold even now.

 _‘But you came back, Jon._ ’

She’d trusted him. She hadn’t trusted anyone back then, but she _had_ trusted him. The two of them the only inhabitants of the small world between them. It had been the first thing to make him feel like a man again and not something living on borrowed time, meant to die.

He’d only understood that later though.

It had been so strange to be bound to such loyalty, when they had been such strangers. But they’d still been all the other had when they’d been hurting the most, and that taught them how to be together. It had brought them so close, all of it.  She had become his family and had become was her safe place to sleep, and between that and everything else that had happened, Jon had learned to love Sansa in every way he’d known how. And then Arya had found them and Jon had realized the feeling was… tilted a bit to the side, like the gait of someone perpetually leaning in the wind.

It still felt like betrayal, somehow.  

When he tried to explain that to Danny, his words fell short. She seemed to understand though, enough that she didn't immediately insist on her previous idea.

“You know Sansa Stark better than probably anyone. If you think she doesn't and can’t return your feelings, then I would be inclined to believe you.”

It rather hurt to hear it. A strange kind of pinch that still hadn't gotten any more familiar than the first time he’d felt it.

“Would be. But you’re not?”

“No.” Danny leaned forward so suddenly that it startled him a little. Her violet eyes glinted in the candlelight. “It might be as you say, Jon. That you’ll risk more than just a rejection, but also lose your best friend, if you do anything about this. But might be that you won’t. It may be that she can’t love you the way you love her. But maybe she will. A chance may be a small thing, but it’s _something_. Can you truly imagine living your whole life not knowing?”

Jon gulped, blinked slowly. He felt half-enchanted.

“I didn’t know you for so much of a romantic.”

Her answering smile was bright. “Oh, I believe in love Jon Snow. Love saved my life, after all,  don’t you remember?”

He did. He’d been there, after all.

She smiled at him like she knew exactly what he’d thought. Probably she did.

“Goodnight Jon.”

Jon kissed her cheek and waited until she closed the door behind her before he found his bed. He slept little that night.


End file.
